Hello, apocalypteers! Reality is a nightmare, so let’s head immediately into the sweet embrace of pop culture. This week, I explain the many reasons why video games movies don’t work, the difference between Iron Fist and Rogue One’s Chirrut Imwe, what the hell the Super Friends cartoon is in the Arrowverse, and more.…

The Superpower Wiki is a very useful place if you’re trying to remember what a certain ability is called or if you’re trying to find every hero and villain who manipulates ice, for example. It’s also a useful place to find some of the most terrible, most ineffectual, and downright baffling superpowers in the…

What kind of human doesn’t want to have superpowers? I’d literally take any of them—flying, teleportation, invisibility, super strength—shoot, even a useless one like being able to eat anything would be so awesome to have. But there’s a dark side to having superpowers, and it’s mostly because we live in stupid ass…

For some reason every superpower has to come with a downside. The X-Men, for example, are rejected from society for being mutants. But why can’t it just be win-win? It turns out it can, you just need to be a mad scientist like Colin Furze, and build your superpowers yourself.

What superpower would you want to have? The ability to fly? Teleport? Turn invisible? Time travel? Heal? What about to ability to see the invisible? Not exactly the flashiest power you can have especially because we can kind of, sort of do that right now. This lovely animation explainer from Amaël Isnard shows how…

If you need more proof that the octopus is absolutely the super villain of the sea, check out this gnarly superpower that allows the southern sand octopus to create an automatic secret hideout: it shoots jets of water at the sand to make quicksand which it burrows itself in and effectively disappears.

Flight, invisibility, and super-strength are all well and good, but it’s also really easy to make them look cool. And then there are things like “rodent manipulation” and “color absorption.” Which power do other people laugh at— but you know it could actually be great, if you used it right?

Gamers have superpowers. Not in an imposing professional athlete physical sort of way but more like a Professor X, out-think and outwit you capacity. Their reactions are quicker, they can make moves that we could never do, and they might be able to read our minds. Don’t believe me? How about these three video game…

Tom Scott, of the incredibly useful “Things You Might Not Know” has a bone to pick with teleporters. As Scott points out, there are so many things you could do with that ability. And yet, the only thing people with this ability choose to do is fight crime.

Folks in manufacturing jobs are subject to labor that can literally be back-breaking. But this exoskeleton prototype—one of the first designed specifically for industrial work—could make objects with exhausting heaviness feel up to 10 times lighter.

Over the years, Superman’s power-level has fluctuated rapidly, as writers have given and taken away some of the Man of Steel’s abilities in order to embolden or humanise him. But in this week’s Superman #40, Clark Kent underwent one change that brought him back to a level not seen in over 70 years.

In the latest passive-aggressive exchange between the US and its rival superpower, the Department of Commerce has denied Intel a license to export tens of thousands of Xeon Phi chips to China to upgrade the country’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer. Because, you know, nukes.

A chameleon's tongue is nearly two times the length of its body and it can shoot out that slimy sticky thing at 41 g, roughly four times the maximum acceleration of a fighter jet, with deadly quick accuracy: its tongue can reach its prey in 0.07 seconds. Basically, it's an insane, superpower-like weapon to have.

Over the years, Superman's level of power has fluctuated perhaps more than any other hero's — he's gained them, lost them, grown weaker and stronger pretty much from the moment he was created, culminating in the addition of a new power last week. Here's your guide to the Man of Steel's power creep.

Most of the time in comics and movies, when someone gains superpowers, they go off more or less without a hitch. But as this short comic points out, superpowers may not be as great as we think they are — especially if they're incomplete.

You'd think it'd be impossible to upside down in a full 360-degree loop, but it's not, and Damien Walters can prove it. Insane. When you break down the physics, all you have to be able to do is run fast enough when your feet are on the ceiling. The result if you can? Human super powers.

We all know that superpowers equal responsibility, and heroism, and all that. But there's also the fantasy of getting a superpower and just using it for your own selfish ends. What superpower do you wish you had... so that you could just have fun with it?

Harnessing the power of the radioactive spider bite for mass production may not be within our grasp yet, but there are still plenty of technologies — from the all-knowing power of Google to a simple pair of binoculars — that make us better, stronger, and faster than just plain old human.

Plenty of superheroes and supervillains are animal themed, taking on the grace of a cat or the strength of a spider. But there are animals who are super in their own right, with abilities perfectly suited to saving the day.